Rants & raves from a redheaded lawyer w/an unusual career: one where she can be herself online!

Saturday, July 3, 2010

Debt & the Inevitable Public Outcry

Okay, I found this story on debtors going to jail a bit of a misnomer. It's not really "debtor's prison" but more like "don't miss your court hearings & if you didn't know about them, yell loudly about lack of service." I don't have the official source b/c of MSN's stupid attempts to make you do Bing searches to get anything.

One time, my late brother in law was taken to court by creditors over an unpaid debt. The judge asked him if he could pay; he said no. Creditors didn't get their money & because he had no income, there was nothing to garnish. Not to mention that by law, you can't garnish more than a certain % of someone's pay & you can't garnish wages to the point of the person becoming homeless.

So stay out of Minnesota, Arizona & Washington where the court system is apparently pro-creditor & wishes to avoid pesky little things like due process toward the average person. Any police officers who refuse to jail people on stuff like this will deserve esteem in my book. You can't blindly follow orders on everything or you end up just another drone. Have some of these judges lost their rational sense or a duty to uphold sane laws as opposed to being mercenaries for the aristocracy? You're just encouraging a debtor to go kill a man so he'll have a real reason to be in jail or prison instead of a few grand in credit card debt.

Will student loan providers be far behind? What good will putting bright minds in prison do? You don't want people like me in w/the general prison population b/c I tend to give others ideas & would likely attempt to organize a prison riot to make the one in Natural Born Killers look like a minor scuffle. We were also the classic "good kids" in school & I think lawyers would be doing lots of prison breaks.

Hearing about this already ignites my righteous indignation but I believe in not going down without a fight unlike some people.

So reading about this as well also interested me. Had shades of my family relationships, oddly enough.

I can also see that happening even though most people (presumably not living in dysfunctional families but we know it's a crock) would find it off. A lot of blood relatives hate each other.

I tell you this: if I was her, I'd tell the father to piss off permanently & disown him. He'd have been dead to me ages ago. When your family life was not Leave it To Beaver, that word doesn't have the same meaning for you. Family in my book are those people who are there for you no matter what, don't have an angle every time they talk to you & accept you for who you are. They might not like when you do something but they won't ditch you for it.

I have a somewhat shaky relationship w/my father in particular but I will give him this: he's never let me push him away. I know I've pushed him away pretty hard & in my experiences in the legal clinic, I saw fathers give up. This father is apparently another one who didn't bother to have that relationship & gave up.

I still don't have a perfect relationship w/the man but I appreciate who he is much more than I did as a kid. I could never see him trying to do that & I know he's not trying to ride my coat tails. However, I don't delude myself into saying he'll change or that his addiction is okay w/me; it's not.

When you hear about stuff like this, though you appreciate what you have a little more than you did. That's one reason I think working in the legal clinic was so valuable to me; it made me appreciate my family, screwed up as it may be, a little more.

About Me

I am an attorney who used to work with a small indie film production company. Like it or not, it seems I now have a place in the entertainment industry.
DISCLAIMER: The statements on this blog represent my personal views ONLY. It is not to be taken as any representation of the views of ANY other entity besides me, myself & I. I am not a spokesperson for ANYONE other than myself.
This blog is also NOT LEGAL ADVICE nor does any statement here form an attorney-client relationship or convey more than general information. If you want to be MY client, you'll have to sign a retainer agreement & pay me first.